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Law Firm Growth Podcast Episode 46: The Automated Estate Planning Practice and How to Break Records in a Pandemic with Jeff Katz

Narrator: [00:00:00] Welcome to The Law Firm Growth podcast, where we share the latest tips, tactics, and strategies for scaling your practice from the top experts in the world of growing law firms. Are you ready to take your practice to the next level? Let's get started.

Jan Roos: Hey everybody, welcome back to The Law Firm Growth podcast. I'm your host as always, and I am here today with Jeff Katz. Jeff is a super interesting person. I happened to meet back in April and he's the managing partner at JD Katz attorneys at law and the co founder of beyond council. So it's very, no, not like super, it's almost a trope these days as people who are, I'm the former attorney who started doing this thing that services.

Jan Roos: What's really special about Jeff is that he never took his foot off the gas on the law firm. In addition to having a software process, he has fantastically successful estate planning practice over in Bethesda. All [00:01:00] right. So just to start out, we're talking about process and the commonality I saw between being able to scale a firm to a really successful level, but also get a software in place.

Jan Roos: So I think the commonality here. is process. And that's probably why you guys are big. Instead of, a lot of estate planning attorneys who just hang up a shingle and just stay solo for their entire career. So just starting out, I know this is pretty important for you guys, but was there a moment where you started getting oriented around process and really being able to scale?

Jeff Katz: So I think I can go back to the origins of the firm, when I opened this up, I came out of a large accounting firm it was very corporate environment. So they had systems and processes, but they were really designed for a much larger organization. And they had these levels of hierarchy and there were assistants to the assistants and, coming out, as a solo practitioner, I didn't have the budget nor the space to go ahead and bring in that type of infrastructure.

Jeff Katz: And as I started building the practice out, we started looking at, what were these systems and processes that they had in place that made their business successful? And how could we either replicate or improve upon those processes in a way that was going to be Both [00:02:00] time as well as cost efficient for us.

Jeff Katz: And so we started building out these systems from the get go. I started doing estate plans. I started drafting each plan by hand and very cumbersome process. We had a wide variation in terms of how those documents got output and depending on who was working on them and how that was running.

Jeff Katz: And then over the last 20 years, we've turned over the staff, can't tell you how many lawyers have come and gone or paralegals. And so being able to have that system, systematized approach to drafting and process that is consistent means that the documents that we draft today, using the same process that we drafted 10 or 15 years ago, are going to look and feel a lot like those same documents.

Jeff Katz: It doesn't matter who works on it. And so if you think about a place like McDonald's, McDonald's has thousands of outlets all over the world. Yeah. But you know that when you go from one location to the next, you're gonna have the same type of experience, the same quality of French fry, the same taste of the beef it's because they're following a systemized approach to their process that they're able to continuously deliver a very, I don't know how high the quality is but it's a very consistent product to their fans.

Jeff Katz: Now, some people would say McDonald's, you guys aren't [00:03:00] McDonald's. You guys are a law firm. You're not churning out hamburgers or French fries. You're giving people a product or process that they're looking for. Because we're doing this so many times and we've done it.

Jeff Katz: I think we have over the last 20 years done over 2000, I'm sorry, 5, 000 estate plans. You've got to look for ways to be efficient and to deliver that consistent product that what you're meeting or exceeding client expectations.

Jan Roos: Yeah, and it's really interesting because I've definitely read a couple books on like the process of systems and something that you see come out and it seems like very logical that you'd want to have a consistent product with what you put out regardless of what your business is.

Jan Roos: But what do you think it is that's stopping most law firms from doing that? Do you think people are resisting this for some reason because they want to control ownership or do you think they don't have the tools? Like why don't we have more firms like yours out there in the world?

Jeff Katz: I ask myself that question all the time.

Jeff Katz: And I think lawyers tend to view themselves as craftsmen, and they view what they're doing as more of an art than a science, where they're saying, look, we're coming, we're handcrafting this solution for you. And the reality is that, yes, we [00:04:00] are creating a customized solution for individuals, and we can supply that level of skillset.

Jeff Katz: But at the same time, the economy and consumer demand has changed to the point that People want certainty. They don't want to have an open ended blank check when they go out and hire a lawyer. They want to know, what is this process or cost? How long is it going to take? What's it going to look like when it comes out?

Jeff Katz: Can you give me some certainty in terms of that? And lawyers have largely lost real estate transactions on the residential side. They've gone to title companies who have come in and said, look, we can systematize these processes. We can do it at a fixed fee. We know what the costs are going to be. And you, the consumer aren't necessarily running out or running behind someone who's going to court or has 50 other things.

Jeff Katz: You will make your real estate transaction our number one priority. So because of how lawyers are reactive, we have deadlines or people are being sued. We have to respond always thinking in terms of what is the client's going to need? Or need going to be, as opposed to how do we get ahead of that?

Jeff Katz: How are we going to be preemptive in terms of thinking about what those needs and objectives are? And having done this, having seen the entire process, the life cycle of the estate [00:05:00] plan, which really in almost all cases ends with the estate administration, right? Who gets the money? How are they getting it?

Jeff Katz: What does that distribution look like? How can we be efficient? What are the pitfalls that we face in terms of doing this? So when we start drafting and implementing our process, so it's not just a series of documents that come out, But that actual process from the onboarding to the engagement to the execution of documents, that again is systematized so that way they know they've got peace of mind at the end of the day that this project, this is going to deliver that the outcome they're looking for, where their son or their daughter, their spouse gets those assets, they get them in an efficient way.

Jeff Katz: And ultimately without a lot of frictional costs, whether those are taxes or probate fees or whatever those costs may be. And also that there's not a lot of infighting in terms of the family members when the money's being distributed from one to another.

Jan Roos: Yeah, absolutely. And it's, yeah, keeping the value is such an important thing.

Jan Roos: Now, transitioning a little bit, as far as how you guys arrived at the process, like obviously you guys have a system. It wasn't starting from day one with the processes that you guys are running here in 2020. So at what point did you guys start really [00:06:00] looking to. Create these processes and systems. What kind of points should people be thinking about creating themselves?

Jan Roos: And I guess, how did that process get started? Was it something that you were driving personally, Jeff? Was this something that you're helping out with Dottie or what did that whole thing look like within the firm?

Jeff Katz: When I left my accounting firm, I went to a small law firm in Rockville and the guy, he The guy didn't believe in any type of automation.

Jeff Katz: And so he used to hand number the pages on the documents, and then he used to, fill in the dates. And so depending on which printer we printed the documents on, the page numbers were wrong, the dates were wrong. And so for me, it was super frustrating. And so I said, look, there's four, there's field codes, there's form codes, we can maybe make.

Jeff Katz: Just make this a little more efficient and really just produce a better document. This guy was confused. He was truly the caveman lawyer field codes confused him, right? The system date code, you put, putting the date code in his documents was like if I put the date code in, it'll just show the day that i'm looking at it won't show the day that I printed it and i'm like So historically if I have to go back and look at that document I won't know what day it was actually then I have to look at the hard copy [00:07:00] and I was like But who cares, right?

Jeff Katz: It's a word document. And really the goal is that when it's produced, that it's, the data is accurate, the page numbers are accurate and it's automated and your assistant doesn't spend, sit there. And we would just spend hours and hours remembering these things. So one day I just went in, I took the.

Jeff Katz: Documents. I threw in all the field codes and he didn't like it when he complained about it. And then he forgot about it because it just happened in the background. And so every time we sit, produce a set of documents we saved going forward, we saved 20 minutes, just not having to redo the table of contents and not having to do any what else can we do?

Jeff Katz: And so we started looking at how do we do, maybe some merge fields, how do we do this? And so we were working off of, old school forum books and he would go back in and he used to actually. Produce each new estate plan off the last estate plan that he did. And so you end up with all these artifacts that didn't belong or provisions that were incorrect.

Jeff Katz: And so I said, look, we need to start with a blank canvas every time. Is it? That takes a lot of time, Jeff. He's there's a tremendous amount of time to go in and recustomize these documents. And so I started looking at document assembly systems and saying what are the commonalities that are in each of these documents?

Jeff Katz: Can we come up with [00:08:00] that overall overarching system? And then can we. Design a computer program that will then tweak that drafting so it only has the relevant portions And so we're not stuck with someone's artifact So the neat thing is that in the last 20 years since i've been in the practice here We've never had an artifact We've never had you know Another person's name in a document or another person's disposition or tax language that didn't belong Because it came out of someone else's document because again, we're drafting each of these documents truly from scratch Using a pretty sophisticated computerized document automation system And then ultimately outputting a document in Microsoft Word that the attorney can then go in and tweak and put in whatever final edits they need to make that appropriate for them.

Jeff Katz: But at least this way, we've systematized maybe 90, 95 percent of that drafting process. So that way, we're not forgetting anything. We're not omitting things. I've had associates years ago that would, they would draft a state plan for me to look at, and they forgot that Disposition clause they named the trustee they named who the beneficiary was and then they didn't say what happened to the money And i'm like what kind of plan is this?

Jeff Katz: This is

Jan Roos: [00:09:00] Yeah,

Jeff Katz: so and it was just you know super frustrating for me because I had to go and I had to read every document every word to find every one of these mistakes and so you know having that system in there allows us to be really efficient because a is the potential for errors is significantly reduced, but B, the attorneys can really focus on, did I have that residuary clause in it?

Jeff Katz: Because the system will tell them, Hey, you forgot this, right? It's going, it's giving a little bit of AI. Our system goes in and it calculates the ages of beneficiaries. So that way we know if someone's five, that they shouldn't be named as the personal representative. It's going to flag it. It's going to come up with the big error code.

Jan Roos: Yeah, and it's interesting. You mentioned it like that first time they were going back to the printers that you saved 20 minutes there, but it's, it almost seems there's a compounding effect to really investing time and energy into these systems because those 20 minutes might've been stuff that you use to improve a different system.

Jan Roos: And all of a sudden you save 40 minutes and then you look forward to go over the course of 20 years. That's why you're in the position you're in today.

Jeff Katz: So right now we're probably going to produce between 250 and 300 estate plans this year. Yeah. And we don't have the staff that you would need to produce every one of those plans.

Jeff Katz: If you were to have them by [00:10:00] hand, it's just, it would be an impossible goal. We're turning estate, complete estate plans around in seven to 10 days that are running three to 500 pages worth of documents. There's no way you could do that without some form of automation.

Jan Roos: Yeah, absolutely.

Jan Roos: And you also mentioned something that was interesting, which is like the human element to this. Cause I feel like I can't imagine how many law firms across the country are just depending on one person with extremely high attention to detail to have something that's not even close to as efficient as a mechanical system.

Jan Roos: But as far as hiring people for the firm, There's two things that I've thought about as far as, and this is the systems that I've used in my own company as well. So people who are able to work with a system for one, but also people who are able to either just be a mechanic and improve a system or even architect a system from scratch.

Jan Roos: So how do you think about that as far as hires that you've been making in the firm lately, Jeff?

Jeff Katz: So we've definitely undergone, I think, a metamorphosis in terms of, who the people are and how those systems work and how we interact and engage with each other. And I think with COVID, [00:11:00] having a good firm culture has really been key to having that, where there's a level of clarity, where people have a platform they can communicate.

Jeff Katz: And having the right people in the right seats, I think goes a long way to having an efficient system. And so not all lawyers are great people. Client face people and not all client face people are great lawyers. And so it's just a question of getting the right people in those right positions to those needs.

Jeff Katz: Plenty of people come and go in the practice over the last 10 years. I think that the folks that stick around are the ones who are resilient, who really what they do, who believe in what they're doing. The goal and the mission is, and who's interested really aligned with that. Those are the clients.

Jan Roos: Yeah. And that's, and it's the other thing too, is I think on some level there's definitely something to be said for being able to give people a little bit of space to find the right time. But again, that's something that kind of comes from having a successful practice. If it's all hands on deck because you're overburdened and there's not enough staff members to cover the work because the systems are cruddy.

Jan Roos: Then you don't have the leeway to allow people to find their own way. So I think it all comes back to that at the end of the day, but also on that note, switching gears [00:12:00] a little bit, one of the things we hammer a lot on this podcast is about the importance of intake. And I guess there's a little bit of a tie back to the conversation we were having, cause I was actually just.

Jan Roos: Thinking about the actual meeting that we scheduled to get on this podcast together. I got a bunch of different emails. I got the calls. I got the reminders of the day over, which is awesome, but also die. You being super involved in this you guys take intake very seriously. And again, if you look at the numbers that you're about to put up for this year, I think you mentioned between two 50 and 300 Jeff, like that doesn't happen with not falling out with people.

Jan Roos: Could you tell me a little bit about your guys's philosophy on follow up, how to mix up the automated stuff, how often to follow up with people, that kind of thing.

Jeff Katz: At one point. 25 percent no shows, so right, so approximately one fourth of people who scheduled appointments never showed, never called.

Jeff Katz: We didn't hear from them. And for us, we were losing hours and we, people were sitting around conference waiting. And so it was a real cost to us. And at the same time, it was also filling up our calendar of time that we couldn't use to service other clients. So we started looking at ways that we could [00:13:00] reduce that no show rate.

Jeff Katz: The first thing we did was we installed a computerized calendaring system and we put them on the web. Just like you could book a hotel room at a Marriott, you can also book an hour with an attorney. And so that's tied back to our internal calendaring. Just like the Marriott, you can't see who's in the room next to you.

Jeff Katz: Clients can't see who's next on the schedule. They can just see what blocks are available and they can pick a time. We made it super easy for our I have to book that as well. Right now we're doing zoom. And so our accounting system is also generating independent new zoom dial ins for each call. So no one's ever going to wind up on someone else's call.

Jeff Katz: And we're never going to have someone intruding or hanging on. People are basically placed in a waiting room if the call runs over and sit for the next call. And so we're able to maintain client privacy and client confidentiality with that type of system. And then simultaneously, when we're booking those appointments, we're simultaneously adding those people to our practice management system.

Jeff Katz: We use practice Panther right now. And so we. Generate a new client intake on those. So I think that sort of incrementally, helps us not do repetitive data entry. Because we've got that data from that initial intake. I think all that's really super helpful. [00:14:00] Now, once we get those people in there, we have a fantastic system of follow up.

Jeff Katz: The first thing on that system is Dottie. So Dottie picks up, says, hey, any questions, how can we answer it? Walks that client through, explains what they'll need to bring in, the expectations, sends them that email. They also get a Gmail calendar, iCalendar, Outlook calendar invite.

Jeff Katz: They can add it right to their calendar, put it in. So that way they're right on point. And then the automation takes over at that point where we've got a series of phone calls, text messages, and emails to get people in. And so the biggest complaint we get, too many follow ups,

Jan Roos: but those guys are still signing agreements at the end of the day, right

Jeff Katz: there.

Jeff Katz: But that carries through when we send out an engagement letter. So when we send out engagement letters, we send them out in DocuSign. Through our consult, we'll have a paralegal on the call with the attorney. The paralegal will draft the engagement letter. The attorney will review it with the paralegal and the client while they're on the call.

Jeff Katz: And we'll simultaneously send it to DocuSign so that the client has that retainer in hand before the consult is over. Now they can review it at their leisure, decide whether they want to go forward with the engagement or not. But if they don't sign it, If they don't [00:15:00] sign it that day, they're going to get it again the next day.

Jeff Katz: And they're going to get it again the next day. And they're going to get it again the next day. So they're going to just constantly get pinged the same way they got pinged with those phone calls. They're going to get pinged with those DocuSign reminders for the next 30 days. And so we have people who are like, hey, I just signed up for a change.

Jeff Katz: I'm like, oh, that's fine. Just click the line button. And they're stop calling me. It really shows it. It's that level of following up. We've got our systems in there. We actually even sent out an automated thank you note the day after the console. So 22 hours after someone's met with us, they'll get a note from us saying, Hey, thanks for coming in.

Jeff Katz: Any feedback you want to give us an online questionnaire. We do appreciate that. You get a number of those that are filled out. We really do care.

Jan Roos: And I want to dig into that mindset a little bit more because most of the pushback that we've ever gotten from clients of ours that have been saying like, yeah, I don't really want to annoy these people.

Jan Roos: This is a mindset that I think is really important as far as followup goes. It's you guys are coming at this from an angle of service. You're doing this because you want to make sure that they have the plan. They need to protect the wealth that they've built over their life. And. As far as negative feedback, you [00:16:00] guys don't have any crazy one star Google reviews from this or bad stuff from this.

Jan Roos: Like what's the worst that's ever happened from the too much follow up

Jeff Katz: worst that we have follow ups. We have Google reviews where people complain that we called to follow up too many times that when they didn't give us the documents that we asked for, that we continued to call and request them over and over again.

Jeff Katz: And and I'll take that. I'll accept that. I'll own it. If we care too much, we're calling too much and we're following up too much to ensure that they're. That's on us, and I think that's a complaint that every lawyer should get. Mr. Katz's or Mr. Smith's office called me too many times to follow up.

Jeff Katz: And they didn't charge me for the calls, by the way. They just kept continuing to follow up over and over again as to when I was going to execute, when I was going to send them documents, reminding me of appointments, calling my financial advisor to make sure that they had gone through and done all the implementation.

Jeff Katz: It's really irritating.

Jan Roos: Yeah. . That's, I always say we, we recorded a podcast about this not too long ago. It's like the same way that somebody in a negotiation, if they say yes to the first offer, you didn't ask for enough. Spoil if Yeah. If you didn't, if you're not telling people to stop marketing so hard, you're not marketing [00:17:00] hard enough, not close the business that you could.

Jan Roos: All right. And then as far as some, so clearly there's been a lot of thought that's gone into, and I'm gonna switch gears a little bit too away from your guys' practice. And to Beyond Council, this is something if people have been listening to this and saying, actually, that'd be really nice.

Jan Roos: I own an estate planning practice. Tell us about like, why you started co founded Beyond Council and what you've been looking to accomplish with that.

Jeff Katz: So one of the things that we found is that because we have such a high volume of intakes, because we're doing 20 or 25, we can judge and measure what's working, what's not.

Jeff Katz: working. So we're actually doing our own AB tests in our office in terms of our presentation style, learning styles, and what's being effective and what's not being effective for our clients. And we started thinking look, this is really valuable for us, but it's also valuable for other attorneys who maybe not, they don't have the same level of intake.

Jeff Katz: And so we said, can we put this out? And so one of the things that beyond council did is we took some existing document assembly software. We created an online community. We created a knowledge base of video CLEs where we're giving that information to [00:18:00] people so they can make their practices better so they can spend more time, engaging with the client, doing that, that left side versus right side of the brain thing where they're not spending all their hours drafting, but really saying, how do we implement, how do we engage with that client?

Jeff Katz: How do we get that goal from point A to point B?

Jan Roos: And then as far as the situation, so this has been on the market for a couple of years, right?

Jeff Katz: It has, yeah. So the software, when we acquired it, had already been in existence for, I think, 10 or 15 years. Over the last 20 years, we've gotten, I think, over 100 users at any one point in time.

Jeff Katz: And our users combined have created over 1 million documents with the system. This has been battle tested. It's battle proved. The crazy thing is that the only attorneys who have dropped off the system for the most part have either retired or died and so It's a very sticky application and because it works It's not the fanciest application.

Jeff Katz: But it is tried and true. It gets the job done. It has the, a little bit of AI built into it, but it allows the attorney to, to draft [00:19:00] documents the way they want to, but also gives them that sort of flexibility of having that system in place through a series of checklists, through a workflow, through identifying key documents and then that follow up system where they've engaged with the financial planners.

Jeff Katz: A lot of our referrals come from financial planners who have met us through our engagement with their other clients. We've been introduced to them where they see, okay, not only are our documents qualitatively better than a lot of what they're seeing, but our process where we're going on and reaching out to those financial advisors to make sure that the planning has been implemented.

Jeff Katz: Is also more attractive. And one of the things that the financial advisor say is, Hey Jeff, we get paid based on a assets under management. And so when you bring a client to us or we send a client to you and that client brings back in, an additional 401k or a 4 0 3 B account for us to manage, you're actually adding real value to our practice as well.

Jeff Katz: We're showing the depth and of our knowledge, but then we're ultimately getting paid for it 'cause we have more assets to manage.

Jan Roos: Yeah, that's really impressive. And this is even beyond to like the partnership angle of the whole marketing too, which is, it just [00:20:00] super potentially interesting as well.

Jan Roos: And as far as I'd probably be remiss to to not ask if anyone's listening to this, it sounds like a really cool platform. What would be the best way if someone's this part, let's take my attorney to to get involved with beyond council.

Jeff Katz: So we've got a website. It's a beyond council, B E Y O N D C O U N S E L dot I O.

Jeff Katz: That really walks you through explains the platform. We've got virtual onboarding, got demos online. People can come in and see what it does. You get an overview of it. I'm also available for one on one consults where anyone who's interested in, bringing Their practice up to the 21st century.

Jeff Katz: Happy to share my experience as to how I've run the practice and share war stories with other attorneys who are looking to move to that next level in their practice.

Jan Roos: All right. Awesome. Jeff, super generous offer of your own time as well. It sounds like you have enough going on. Guys. I'd super appreciate the interview, Jeff, any kind of last questions, for anyone who might be a little bit earlier on the path or, maybe to a younger version of yourself, if somebody is looking to really scale their estate, like practice, anything that we forgot to ask.

Jeff Katz: The question isn't people always [00:21:00] ask me, Hey, Jeff, what happens if I die? Or what happens if, and I always tell people it's not really an if question, it's a when question. And so if people are asking themselves, what happens if I become successful, right? What happens if I scale my practice? It's never going to happen.

Jeff Katz: I think the question people really need to be asking is when, what happens when I scale my practice? What happens when I put these processes into place? What happens when I decide that I'm going to be successful, right? And so taking that step, identifying the goal, Is really the first step and then coming up with a plan to get you there is the second and having good marketing having systems and processes, because ultimately if you've got a great system, that's great, but it's only as good as the ability to feed the system.

Jeff Katz: And so having a marketing plan in place that, that feeds that is really the key, whether it's your personally picking up the phone and calling financial advisors or using Facebook advertising or whatever that marketing system is, you got to feed the beast because ultimately having a great system that scales is only as good as your ability.

Jeff Katz: To keep it full.

Jan Roos: Yeah. Yeah. It's you have the great system that can handle a thousand clients a month, but it's not getting any money. It's like paying for a Ferrari and having it [00:22:00] just sitting in your car.

Jeff Katz: So the other thing that, that I find talking to attorneys is that a lot of these attorneys are great technically, but they have no way that they just don't understand how to market.

Jeff Katz: They don't understand when there's clients out there, people who might need them, how to get themselves in front of those people. I think that's the other part that it's really missing from most attorneys, wheelhouses or skill sets.

Jan Roos: Yeah. As, as far as the terms of marketing too, since like you guys have had quite a lot of success with the financial planners and that sort of thing.

Jan Roos: I guess overall what's worked for the best for you guys over the years?

Jeff Katz: So I think fit for between client and advisor goes a long way. I think that having advisors that know that we're accessible, we really do break down the process, very manageable series of steps.

Jeff Katz: And so both they and the client can eat that one piece at a time. I think that goes a long way. I think that there's, a number of ways of integrating, but ultimately having that sort of playbook in place of here's what my marketing plan looks like. Here's what my implementation plan looks like.

Jeff Katz: Here's what my growth plan looks like on being able to identify that each of those steps, I think holistically is really where most people need to be. And it's really just not a skill set [00:23:00] that most attorneys have. The sitting down with somebody and particularly people who can help because it turns to see I want to be busier, but they don't know how to be busier.

Jeff Katz: They're too busy working on the clients they're working on to be thinking about where the next client is coming from.

Jan Roos: It's they don't have that almost like the margin in their time and their energy is really just not there to put effort into that. Yeah.

Jeff Katz: And really, the thing is most attorneys are not great marketers.

Jeff Katz: And so I think if they can hire somebody, bring in an outside system or an outside process to, to run that for them efficiently, it just allows them to focus on what they're good at, which is practicing law and, implementing these plans.

Jan Roos: Yeah, I gotcha. And then I'll also say to me, like having the intake part is such an important thing, cause it's like one of those efficiency things as well.

Jan Roos: It's if you can bring. Five out of 10 people ended up bringing the law office bringing into the office home versus one out of 10 people talk about, this is probably the number one question that I get from people that are, when I'm reaching out for the first time is what's the ROI. And I say, I don't know what's your close rate, but it's a thing too.

Jan Roos: Cause if you, and you guys are great example of just having, the fallout that you guys have had and the intake and that kind of thing. It doesn't matter [00:24:00] whether you're getting somebody who's coming in, recommended from a financial advisor, or because you paid somebody to go spin a sign outside on the street when they get in there, they're in the it's like the gates of Thermopylae with 300.

Jan Roos: Like you're going to get through it regardless. That's right.

Jeff Katz: Yeah. And so obviously the more at bat you get, the better you'll get in terms of owning the presentation and understanding client's goals and objectives. And I think that goes a long way towards meeting those client goals. But I think the flip side of that is sometimes, if you're getting the wrong types of clients, the people who are coming in aren't, the people you want to be serving, winning those people out.

Jeff Katz: So that way you're not wasting a lot of intellectual capital or time that you can work in other things. We talk about TKs and my friend up in Pennsylvania talks about plate lickers. He used to do presentations and he'd have these people that would show up and they'd say, Hey, the presentation was good, but Morgan Stanley served steak and you guys only served steak.

Jeff Katz: And they were literally there to lick the plate. And he actually sent me a video one day of a kid that had come in and had poured a plate full of ketchup on and was sitting there and was literally licking the plate. Nothing left on the plate. And of course, those are [00:25:00] not the kinds of people I appreciate, buying.

Jeff Katz: Strangers dinner, but really those are not the people you want to be serving.

Jan Roos: Yeah,

Jeff Katz: because we're at the end of the day. We're really not mcdonald's

Jan Roos: So yeah one last thing I wanted to ask so as far as okay Then we're recording this on a zoom right now So I see you have this very interesting setup as far as your background but one of the things you mentioned earlier and this is actually the state of the union when You and I first spoke back in april jeff was that you guys have been busier than ever with corona and with that has come You The whole process for closing clients virtually through zoom and other kind of, non non physical means, so can you tell us how you guys have adapted to that? Any changes that you guys had to make in your process, that kind of stuff?

Jeff Katz: Yeah, so I'll tell you, when we started working from home, we started scheduling conference calls, just telephone conference calls to people. And they were at abysmal failure.

Jeff Katz: Like we had no zero signups. We just had nobody, retained us. We tried to basically take our in person consult and do it over the phone and it was a disaster. And then we added zoom. And then we had different people in their homes and they had their children running behind them and they had [00:26:00] dogs and cats and contractors walking around.

Jeff Katz: And so then we came up with this virtual background. So the virtual background that I'm sitting on now is like a blue background with different lights. It's actually used in church services for reverends and priests and rabbis and whoever, and so it's actually got a spotlight in the center. So it spotlights the person.

Jeff Katz: It's a very, it's a zoom video. So it runs in a loop. But it's, there's no break in that loop. It's not necessarily distracting. All of our state planning team has the same background. So it doesn't matter where we are. So right now I have a lawyer who's sitting in Delaware. I have a lawyer who's in St.

Jeff Katz: Louis. I have a law clerk who's, oh gosh, in New York. And even though we're in different locations, cause we all have the same background, we're all wearing similar, we're all wearing blue or black, solid color shirts. We look like we're in the same location, wearing the same thing. We then have a PowerPoint presentation, which is color matched our background.

Jeff Katz: And so some of our clients have actually thought we were embedded in the presentation. I thought we were like AI lawyers. One lady didn't think I was a real person. And I'm like, [00:27:00] what? So that was some kind of computer generated, like Alexa or something. Jeff's out.

Jan Roos: Let's say Wizard of Oz. Wizard of Oz, yeah.

Jeff Katz: And so then we said, okay so we added the Zoom, our closing rate went up. We added the PowerPoint presentation, the closing rate went up. We added the DocuSign. As we've been evolving this, we went from a 0 percent closing rate up to about an 80 percent closing rate during the same consult.

Jeff Katz: We've onboarded in the last 75 days. For 60 days, approximately 75 new clients through consoles. And so we're actually at a point now where our closing rate is higher on zoom with the PowerPoint, with the docusign, with the paralegal than it was when people were coming to the office and we're booking more appointments.

Jan Roos: Yeah, that's a good point too, because it's interesting. I feel like a lot of times, and this is the worst thing. And to your point, I've actually never heard the term caveman lawyer before, but I'm going to have to start using that because definitely work for the couple of those. But it's like a lot of times people just throw their hands up in the air.

Jan Roos: Like I remember I was speaking to, actually, this is an old client of mine, good friend. [00:28:00] He was like, basically, Hey, look, we're getting a lot of good stuff and people are closing business on zoom. And he said, you know what? Honestly, I've never been able to close over the phone. It's always been in person.

Jan Roos: I don't know if it's my pheromones. I don't know what it is, but the guy refused to give it a shot. And I think what's super key about what you guys have, maybe bring this thing full circle is that you guys trusted the process. You guys trusted the fact that you could make up to something.

Jan Roos: And then again, it wasn't, zero to 80 percent overnight. But after a couple iterations, you guys are there. And now it's a, it's an asset that you guys have developed in your business. As far as the process that you guys have been relying to the years to come, maybe the last question it's as the world opens up, are you guys even trying to do that?

Jan Roos: Are you guys going to stay virtual?

Jeff Katz: So the, the irony now is that we have the ability to serve people throughout the state. We're no longer localized to one specific area, let's say Bethesda, Maryland, so we can now get. Client intakes from all over the state of Maryland, as long as they have the bandwidth or an iPhone or something where they can see the zoom and we've had lawyers from other law firms who have called him and said, Hey Jeff, can we sit in on a consult?

Jeff Katz: So we'll get client consent. We'll have them sit in and they're just wowed. We [00:29:00] have, we had a county partner who was in last week. We were doing their presentation. They said, Hey Jeff, I sit in on zoom calls and PowerPoints all the time. I've never seen anybody do anything like this before.

Jeff Katz: This is just so it's so out of the box and it's so effective. I see thanks. And then they say where do I sign the retainer? And I'm like, Oh, we'll send it to you.

Jan Roos: Yeah. And then I'll have to get this on the show notes for everyone. So we can see, we'll at least get like a screen cap of what this whole thing, because it's really something to see.

Jan Roos: So Jeff Dottie, it's been super awesome. And it was great to sit down with you guys. Thank you so much for all the advice for our listenership, super appreciate this episode. Any last sort of parting thoughts before we sign off?

Jeff Katz: I told people it's the Kevin Costner field of dreams, build it. And they will come.

Jeff Katz: They will come.

Jan Roos: Okay. And that's awesome. I was going to say, there's probably a lot of things that people incorrectly think is that thing. But as far as process, I think definitely an agreement there. All right. Awesome guys. So we'll be back next week for another episode of The Law Firm Growth podcast.[00:30:00]

Narrator: Thank you for listening to The Law Firm Growth Podcast. For show notes, free resources, and more, head on over to casefuel.com/podcast Looking forward to catching up on the next episode.